


Turn the Temperature Hotter

by BlueTwo



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (by Nyma and Rolo specifically), 5 + 1 except it's 3 + 1, AKA, BFFs Allura and Lance, Blue is Lance's beautiful pet cat, Creepy exes, Damsel in Distress Lance, Fire Chief Shiro, Foiled Dubcon, Keith and Lance are both mid-twenties in this, Lotor is Lance's Implied Unfortunate Ex, M/M, Nyma and Rolo have nefarious intentions but nothing comes of it, Recreational Drug Use, Stalking (the uncomfortable kind and the facebook kind), everyone else is aged older accordingly, firefighter keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 01:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14843099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueTwo/pseuds/BlueTwo
Summary: “I saved your life?” Keith says, confused.“You should have just let me die,” Lance tells him, and slowly returns to the laundry building so he can at least suffer the heart attack from embarrassment fully clothed and in peace.✧✧✧Keith is a firefighter. Lance just happens to be in need of a rescue.





	Turn the Temperature Hotter

**Author's Note:**

> for my dear friend and fellow lance stan, [rachel](http://www.twitter.com/rachel_huey88).

**1.**

 

The first time is an accident.

 

Lance slips down to the laundry room for maybe all of five minutes when he hears the fire alarm echoing through the building.

 

With both hands slapped over his ears and tangled in the untamed mess of his hair, he narrows his eyes at the flashing red alarms until—

 

Oh, shit.

 

As soon as he remembers, he sprints up the stairwell, shoving past his ambling, evacuating neighbors. He ducks one of Mrs. Goldstein’s flailing elbows and almost runs directly into the guy across the hall from him.

 

“Prom!” he yells over the shrill noise. “What’s going on?”

 

Prompto stops in his descent to shrug ruefully at Lance. “The smoke’s coming out of your room, dude. I should be asking you!”

 

“Cheese and crackers,” he curses, waving Prom off and picking up his mad dash to the fourth floor as everyone else continues down.

 

Before he’d started his laundry, he’d showered and blow-dried his hair. Then, as he started to straighten it, he remembered that he didn’t have any more clean pairs of jeans. He can’t quite picture the state he left his room in, but when he’d frantically grabbed his hamper and detergent to run downstairs to the washers, he may or may not have tossed 400 degrees of heated ceramic onto the soft, cotton face towel on the precipice of his ever-leaky sink.

 

Of course, it’s all Lance’s fault. But he can’t wallow right now. He needs to make sure the one irreplaceable thing in his apartment is safe.

 

“Baby?” he yells as he slams through the staircase and down the hall to apartment 439.

 

When he throws the faded blue door open, a cloud of smoke hits him in the face. He coughs as he stumbles inside, reaching up to cover his mouth with his hand and angling his torso to the ground to avoid the worst of it. “Ba— baby,” he wheezes, frantically spinning around for a flash of white. “Baby blue, where are you?” Busting into his bedroom, he sees the majority of the smoke coming from the open doorway to the bath.

 

Panic starts to squeeze his lungs alongside the dense smoke, and he drops to his knees only partly of his own volition. He crawls towards the bed, peeking underneath and hoping to see a pair of glowing eyes. Aside from some dust, a pair of sneakers, and a pile of unopened letters from his ex, there’s nothing. “Blue?” he calls again, hoping for something, anything.

 

A bang jolts Lance out of his thoughts and he realizes the smoke has thickened so much that he can no longer stand. In his hysteria, how long has he been on the ground?

 

But the loud noise is enough to startle out a terrified “ _meow!_ ” and Lance is sure he’s crying. “Baby!” Lance answers, desperately trying to pinpoint the direction of the sound in the haze. He can’t see anything. Sweat tingles at the back of his neck. Was it this hot when he came up here?

 

Suddenly two gloved hands haul him up, and a muffled voice says, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

 

Vertigo slows both his uptake and limbs. Once the shock wears off and it registers that this man is carrying him through his apartment— _away from Blue_ —he shouts with hoarse protests his lungs can’t handle. “My baby!” he sobs, thrashing in the strong hold. “Let me get my baby!”

 

The firefighter tightens his grip and keeps going. “Sir, we need to get you to the ground.”

 

“No, no, no—” Lance protests, but his voice is rough and weak. He’s starting to feel dizzy, and sick, and the only thing keeping him from a full-blown panic attack is the sturdy hands the firefighter has on him no matter how hard he fights. Eventually he stops, but only because moving is too much for his body to handle.

 

The last thought he has is of Blue.

 

✧✧✧

 

“Lance,” calls a soft voice with a posh accent he’d recognize anywhere. He opens his eyes, the gentle touch of a hand smoothing through his hair easing him back into consciousness.

 

“Allura?” he asks, brow furrowed before he gasps and snaps upright, plastic and tubes falling away as he remembers— Blue—

 

“Lance!” she repeats, exasperated now but still soft, trying to replace the oxygen mask to help him breathe. He bats her hands aside and looks around frantically.

 

“Allura. Blue— where’s Blue? Did they— Is she—” His voice grates against his throat, jagged and breathy in turns. He can’t quite get the air in his lungs that he needs to speak, like it no longer knows how to fit.

 

“Relax, Lance, please.” She tries to coax him back down to the mat the EMTs have him laid out on, but he shoves her hands off and stumbles to his feet. He almost pitches forward, legs not quite ready and head still spinning, but a big, gloved hand braces him.

 

“Woah there,” a deep voice admonishes. Lance marvels at the man before him: tall, handsome, broad as hell with an old, red scar across his nose— and—

 

“Blue!” Lance gasps. His fluffy white angel blinks up at him from the curve of this buff guy’s arms, cozy and more than pleased with herself. He stumbles again in his eagerness, leaning haphazardly into the firefighter and crushing Blue between them as he tries to convince himself that she’s okay. His fine motor skills refuse to work long enough to get her in his arms and stand upright at the same time.

 

Sensing his distress, Allura comes up behind him and keeps a hand at his back so he can find his feet. The firefighter follows her lead, and helps hold Blue to Lance’s chest.  

 

“I cannot thank you enough for rescuing her,” Allura says, bridging the conversation so that Lance doesn’t have to. “She is a very important part of the family.”

 

“Hey, what about me?!” Lance protests, sounding like himself were it not how weak his voice is.

 

“You’re alright,” she concedes with a doting smile, reaching up to ruffle his hair. He shakes her off like a petulant cat, completely opposite of the docile creature relaxing in his arms. Her satisfied sounds rumble sweetly, unlike his smoke-roughened attempts to talk. It strikes him again that she could have been seriously hurt, and his fingers clutch a little tighter at her soot-speckled, soft fur.

 

“I’m Allura, and little Blue here belongs to Lance,” she says, reading the name patch on the firefighter’s uniform. “Truly, thank you again Mr... Shirogane?”

 

“You can just call me Shiro,” he tells her kindly. “Everyone else does.”

 

“You saved my baby,” Lance says instead, trying to keep his voice steady. Both Shiro and Allura look at him with concern. Blue’s little chest rises and falls in the crook of his arms as he squeezes her tight. He wants nothing more than to run away back to his apartment and cry away the stress, but clean up will take more than a minute and he owes this guy his gratitude.

 

The firefighter smiles gently and holds out the one un-gloved hand to Blue, who sniffs it and hesitantly gives it a lick. “She made it easy,” Shiro says, tickling her chin.

 

“Unlike you,” another firefighter snaps, popping his helmet off and all but throwing it on the ground as he storms toward them. The first guy murmurs an admonishment of “Keith, respect the equipment,” but he’s already in Lance’s face, smudged with soot and dark eyes flashing. “What’s your problem? You fought me every step of the way. Do you know how dangerous that is? For both of us?”

 

Lance gawks at him, some of his energy returning out of sheer obstinance. “Maybe if you hadn’t thrown me over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes and actually _listened_ to me—”

 

“A sack of—! What are you talking about! I cradled you in my arms!”

 

“Nope, nuh-uh. Never happened,” Lance sneers back, clutching Blue closer and sloping nose upturned. He makes the mistake of eyeballing the jerk, and even though he can’t really see much through the heavy material of his gear, he _can_ see that this guy is almost his exact same height and has a sharp jawline that would be sweet if he didn’t radiate such aggression from his very core.

 

Keith looks so offended that, if Lance’s chest weren’t aching and harboring an indignant resentment of his own, he would laugh. Then he notices something.

 

It’s a revelation. It helps put a damper on the desperate need to hang off of those broad shoulders for support. “You have the ugliest hair I’ve ever seen,” Lance announces.

 

Color rises along Keith’s rigid jaw like fists itching to take a swing when another dark-haired firefighter brushes by on their left with Prompto in tow, shaking choppy locks out from under his newly removed helmet. Lance blinks, mouth falling open. He makes incredulous eye contact with Keith. “Never mind.”

 

“I saved your life?” Keith says, confused. Lance wonders if he means that he regrets doing it, or he genuinely doesn’t understand why Lance would react this way. But as Lance attempts to parse what Keith is trying to say, he notices that in his silence Keith has started to, well... stare. He’s about to make a snide, flirty comment to call him on it when he realizes that he’s been in just his raggedy, thin blue boxers this whole time.

 

“You should have just let me die,” he tells him, and slowly returns to the laundry building so he can at least suffer the heart attack from embarrassment fully clothed and in peace.

 

✧✧✧

 

Later, when he checks his phone from the comfort of Allura’s guest bedroom, he sees that both Takashi Shirogane and Keith Kogane have added him on Facebook. He accepts Shiro right away, and leaves Keith to dwell just long enough for him to find out from Shiro that Lance added him first before finally accepting the friend request.

 

He quickly changes his relationship status from “it’s complicated” to “single.”

 

It’s worth the angry texts from Lotor that he doesn’t bother to respond to.

 

 

  
  
**2.**

 

The second time is a mistake.

 

In the interest of full disclosure, Lance doesn’t even have anything to do with it. Not really.

 

It’s not in his apartment, at least.

 

Rolo is the typical white twenty-something stoner, and Nyma is his typical too-good-for-him girlfriend. They’re both pretty cool, and pretty hot, and Lance sometimes gets the vibe that Nyma wants him to join them for a threesome. The idea makes him a little breathless, but he’s still getting over a bad relationship, and he’s mentioned it more than enough for them to know know he’s not interested.

 

For now, they’ve kept it friendly and invited him to join them for Game of Thrones and a bowl.

 

Lance doesn’t particularly enjoy smoking, and he never does it on his own. To his detriment, however, he can be a bit of a joiner if it means the approval of others, especially ones as attractive as Nyma and Rolo. (He was the same way with his ex, which is why his ex is now his ex.) Really, he doesn’t want to disappoint them, or ruin the episode with his sober presence.

 

After he takes his third hit, he’s found enough of a rhythm that he doesn’t hack out all the smoke before it can settle properly into his lungs for a solid high. Colors light up a little brighter, while everything else dissipates, hazy around the edges. Before the episode started, Rolo had been on one end of the couch, and Nyma perched on the armchair adjacent; now Nyma’s next to him, her round thigh hitched up almost in his lap, and he thinks he can feel Rolo’s long fingers curled just above his knee. Lance is too busy watching the dragons in high definition to care.

 

Nyma’s breath feathers over his neck, his ear, his jaw. Rolo passes him the bowl, and as he takes it, Nyma’s slender hand wraps around his wrist, accompanied by something metallic and cold. It clicks, and Lance blinks. The smoke wafts from his mouth and vanishes between them; Rolo plucks the bowl from his hands to take a pass for himself. As he flicks the lighter, the second cuff closes around Lance’s other wrist.

 

He stares down at the distorted blur of his reflection in the steel for too long, long enough that Nyma tips his chin back towards her so he can melt into her vivid violet contacts instead. With her soft blonde hair and mystic eyes, she looks like every Daenerys fantasy he’s ever had: sweet, with an undercurrent of molten stone. He’s always been susceptible to ethereal blondes that struggle to see him as a person and not a prop.

 

In all honesty, he probably would have fallen for it if she hadn’t tugged him closer with the chain of the handcuffs. The metal digs into his wrists and he frowns, stopping his forward momentum before her lips can press to his. A tense moment passes where neither of them move— Nyma unsure of his reaction, Lance unsure of what the fuck is going on.

 

When he figures it out, he jolts and tries to shove her back; but with his hands tied between them and Rolo so close on the other side, Lance loses his balance, toppling into Rolo’s shoulder. He knocks both the bowl and lighter to the ground as he struggles to stay upright and ends up splayed in the other guy’s lap.

 

It takes longer for Rolo to say, “What the fuck, man,” than it does for the hemp rug to ignite in a glorious blaze.

 

There’s no smoke detector to sound the alarm, because Nyma and Rolo got rid of it so they could smoke freely. Silence and Westeros in surround sound crackle together, the dragon’s flames spreading in time with the trail of fire working itself up in the living room around it.

 

Nyma runs for the door and Rolo jumps up, knocking Lance to the hardwood floor in a loudly offended heap. He steps over Lance to toss the remnants of a wayward beer can on the flames, and when nothing happens, he chucks the can at it and scrambles after his girlfriend, not even pausing to look back at their unfortunate guest.

 

“Wait,” Lance pleads, struggling to get his feet under him when his limbs are curled up like an inchworm and his mind is still only using a handful of its synapses. From the floor, he spies Nyma’s android under the coffee table, close to the crackling of the fire closing in. He grabs it with both clumsy hands and unlocks the Emergency feature, dialing 9-1-1.

 

The operator picks up just as, onscreen, Daenerys is looking upon the destruction. Her icy skin and hair match the cool disinterest in her eyes. Lance feels inexplicably judged.

 

“Sir?” The operator asks again. “Do you require emergency services dispatched to your location?”

 

“The living room is on fire,” he answers, feeling embarrassed, caught, and stupid.

 

“Help is on the way, sir,” she says after he rattles off the address. “In the meantime, can you evacuate the area?”

 

“I think she’s mad at me,” Lance tells the dispatcher mournfully, on a cough. “I just didn’t want to kiss her. Dragons are cool and all but I’d rather kiss Jon Snow. I think most people would rather kiss Jon Snow.”

 

He gets to his knees, pulling himself up the rest of the way with the seat of the couch. The phone balances in his open palms, but standing at his full height puts him at pace with the rising smoke. Taking a calming breath is a mistake. His eyes burn. The operator is telling him something, but it blurs in his ears. He makes it out the door to the blessedly cool air of the hallway before he falls to the floor.

 

His lungs labor with a few deep breaths, and he leans his head against the wall as his vision swims. Help is on the way, she said. He closes his eyes, focusing on breathing in as much of the cool air as possible. The hallway smells like smoke and weed, which makes it hard. Help is on the way, he tells himself. He kind of wants to throw up before they get there, so he doesn’t have to do it in front of them.

 

_Help is on the way._ Everything will be fine.

 

✧✧✧

 

Everything is not fine.

 

Lance wakes up, shaken hard enough that his head flops back and forth. When he pries his eyes open, he stares at the pale face before him. “Jon?”

 

“Who the fuck is Jon?” Jon asks, his heavy brow slowly coming back into proper focus. Lance reaches up to rub his eyes, only to realize his hands are still cuffed together. He pouts at them, not sure what to do.

 

Jon holds his cheek with a rough, gloved hand, bringing Lance’s gaze back to his. He looks so serious, and so familiar. “Who did this to you?”

 

“You’re not Jon Snow,” Lance replies.

 

“I’m definitely not Jon Snow,” the guy says, offended. “Eating pussy isn’t my thing.”

 

“That’s not fair, dude. If a girl goes down on you, she deserves the same courtesy.”

 

“I’m gay.”

 

“Oh.” Lance blinks at him, finally focusing on the navy-indigo of his irises and the pure disbelief in them. It’s the expression he remembers more than anything else. “Keith? The angry firefighter?”

 

Keith rolls his eyes. “Alright, up you go.”

 

He picks Lance up without even a grunt of effort, and Lance thinks he’s a little offended that it’s so easy for him to be lifted. “I’d have known it was you a lot faster if you didn’t have the helmet on,” Lance placates, nuzzling his head against his shoulder. “I’d recognize that mullet anywhere.”

 

“I will drop you,” Keith says. In the end, he carries Lance down all six flights of stairs, lowers him gently into sitting position in the ambulance, and hovers nearby to watch as the EMT places an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

 

✧✧✧

 

Once the fire is under control and Lance has been tended to, both the police and fire department have questions. They want to know whose apartment was the scene of the fire, because Keith had been adamant that it was not Lance’s. They want to know who is responsible for the staggering amount of drugs found in the wreckage, as well as the drugs in Lance’s system. And, most of all, they want to know who cuffed Lance and presumably left him for dead.

 

In hindsight, it all seems overwhelmingly sinister. Lance shrinks under the pitying looks from Sergeant Kolivan and Fire Chief Shiro. Worst of all is the taut, angry line of Keith’s mouth, and the way he isn’t even looking at him.

 

It makes Lance feel even more stupid.

 

He scratches self-consciously at his jaw. “Can we maybe get these off?” He rattles the cuffs.

 

Keith stomps off, and Lance’s stomach twists in embarrassment. First leaving his straightener on, and now this? These guys must think he’s an idiot. Here he is, wasting serious department resources all because he can’t function like a normal human being. He can’t shake the feeling that he should be in trouble.

 

“You’re not in trouble, Lance,” Shiro assures him, sounding entirely too soft for a man of his stature. “We just need to know what happened.”

 

“They didn’t mean any harm. It was my fault— really!” Shiro looks skeptical, and Lance hears a snort from his side. Keith has returned with bolt cutters. Lance can’t help but shrink away from him and the very sharp tool in his very capable hands. Keith grabs Lance’s wrists firmly and mutters for him to hold still, and Lance does only because he wouldn’t put it past Keith to ‘accidentally’ cut off a finger.

 

“Who are ‘they’?” Kolivan asks, and his underling officer stands at his side with an ipad, ready to take notes.

 

“Nyma and Rolo— my neighbors.” One of the handcuffs snaps away from his wrist, and Lance flinches. Surprisingly, Keith bends the defunct metal away from his skin, careful not to let it pinch. Once it’s finally free and dangling, Keith rubs his calloused fingers against the chafed skin in a soothing, circular motion.

 

As if Lance wasn’t having enough trouble breathing already.

 

“They, uh— they live a couple of floors above me. They’ve always been pretty friendly and harmless, you know, like most stoners.” Shiro and Kolivan share a look. “Hey, it’s legal now!”

 

“That doesn’t explain the handcuffs,” Keith mutters, now focusing on the other wrist.

 

Lance sighs, then promptly dissolves into a series of hacking coughs. Keith’s palm at the small of his back is the only thing keeping him from falling over. With his free hand, he rubs at his watery eyes. “Sorry,” he says roughly.

 

Shiro frowns. “Don’t apologize, Lance. Take your time.”

 

“The handcuffs?” Kolivan prompts.

 

“Um, well. I’ll be honest with you. I really don’t know where those came from. One second we’re all sitting on the couch watching HBO, and the next I’m locked up and a hot girl is trying to kiss me.” The second cuff snaps off, and it hurts a little more this time. Lance whimpers and Keith’s immediately soothing the skin and wrapping it with a cool, damp cloth.

 

“What happened next?” Shiro prompts.

 

“I kinda, maybe, sorta... freaked out. And when I tried to get away, I hit into Rolo, who was using the lighter, and... yeah....” His face feels like it’s on fire under the stony scrutiny of these two capable men who’ve probably never flinched away from a girl in their whole lives.

 

“Sorry,” Lance tacks on again listlessly, not entirely sure what he keeps apologizing for but feeling the responsibility of it anyway.

 

“What are you sorry for?” Keith pipes up. Lance meets his stare, only to be intimidated by the outrage there. “You were practically drugged, almost assaulted and could have been killed! None of this was your fault.”

 

Well. That makes it sound a lot more dramatic than it was. “But I—”

 

“Come on. You really think I’d let you off the hook that easy if you were actually to blame?” The turn of Keith’s mouth is almost smug.

 

Lance’s own mouth snaps shut with a click.

 

 

  
  
**3.**

 

The third time is entirely his fault.

 

He’d meant to get Hunk’s help, but his best friend calls ten minutes before he’s supposed to be there with the bad news that work is keeping him late. To be fair, Hunk doesn’t even know Rachel, so he was doing Lance a pretty big favor— but the party is in three hours and he needs to get a cake in the oven if he wants it iced in time.

 

Of course someone like Lance—whose culinary expertise is minimal and maintenance level is high—perhaps should have known better than to take a shower while the mix baked. Being as astute as he is, he also should have realized that he shut the dish towel in the oven. Unfortunately, the smell of smoke doesn’t even reach him until it’s convoluted with the steam from his shower. After he gets out and feels a little sick, he thinks opening the door and turning on the fan will clear up the steam and his head.

 

When he sees smoke all through the hallway and pouring from the kitchen, he dives for the bathroom sink, where he left his phone.

 

If he’s lucky, a certain firefighter has the day off.

 

✧✧✧

 

Keith doesn’t have the day off. By the time the fire department gets there, Lance has mostly contained the flames—if not the smoke—and is mourning both the loss of the cake and the dish towel as he slumps down the stairs. On the way, he runs directly into Keith, who was taking the steps two at a time.

 

“Hi,” he says sullenly, arms crossed high and gaze averted.

 

Keith stares at him, wide-eyed, for what feels like a long time. Then, once he’s come to the conclusion that Lance isn’t actually hurt, he smirks. “Nice outfit.”

 

Lance tugs self-consciously at the sash of his robe, and adjusts the V over his slim chest so it covers more skin. “I was in the middle of something,” he sniffs haughtily.

 

“Yeah, in the middle of giving me a heart attack,” Keith says, leaning casually against the railing.

 

“Really? You care that much?”

 

“About you? I thought that was obvious.”

 

A blush rises up his exposed chest to settle brightly in his cheeks.

 

“Especially considering you’ve proven that you can’t take care of yourself. At _all_.”

 

Lance gasps in outrage, an offended hand pressing indignantly to his own chest. “I handled this one all on my own, buddy.”

 

Keith raises an eyebrow noncommittally. “Where’s Blue?” he asks instead.

 

“With her grandparents,” Lance tells him snippily. “And frankly I don’t like what you’re implying!”

 

“Do cats have grandparents?” Keith asks, brow furrowed and completely ignoring Lance’s tirade.

 

“I can take care of my daughter perfectly fine on my own, I just didn’t want her to be alone all night while I’m out—”

 

“So you’re busy tonight?” He almost sounds disappointed.

 

“I mean— yes. Yeah.” Lance suddenly, inexplicably wishes he wasn’t.

 

Keith’s dark eyes bore into his for a long minute before he nods. “We’ll assess your place and give you the all-clear as soon as we can.” He brushes past Lance, his gear barely a whisper against the thin silk of Lance’s robe. “Get yourself checked out in the meantime, ok?”

 

“You’re not coming with me?” Lance asks, trying and failing not to sound desperate for more time— for anything Keith is willing to give him. He’s always gotten attached too easily, which would make him susceptible to bad intentions and worse behavior. Strangely, he thinks he wouldn’t mind if Keith tried something with him; but Keith never would, and maybe that’s why it’s different.

 

Keith looks over his shoulder and his eyes are hot in a way that makes Lance shiver. He smiles, which should be friendly, but on a guy like Keith it seems like something more. “I’ll see you around.”

 

Keith’s steps echo as he continues up until they vanish into nothing and the stairwell door closes behind him with a bang.

 

Lance is breathless all the way back to the ground.

  


 

**+1**

 

The alarm doesn’t wake him right away. Gentle strumming from his bulky headphones covers up the blaring noise, diluting it just enough that it takes a few minutes for the sound to distantly register like an unpleasant itch. Half-asleep, he groans and shifts on the bed, tangling himself further in the blankets.  
  
The vibration of his phone is actually what does it, the insistent shaking clattering against his alarm clock and speaker dock.  
  
Blearily, he raises his sleep mask and blinks at the seven missed calls and twelve texts. A handful are from Allura and Hunk, and the rest are from a number he doesn’t know.  
  
“Now who could be trying to reach you?”  
  
Time stops, and Lance with it.

  
Lotor’s voice still sounds like condescension dipped in chocolate, and he can’t help the shudder as he looks up into his cold, clear eyes.  
  
“They won’t be surprised, will they? After all, you’re not very good at responding to messages, are you, Lance?” Lotor stands and walks around Lance’s bed, trailing a proprietary hand along the frame. “Or answering calls, or returning letters.” His nails suddenly dig into the wood beneath them, whole body coiled with his disapproving frown. “I wonder why that is.”

 

“What’s this about, Lotor?”

 

“Oh, Lance. Ever the fool, aren’t you? You know exactly what this is about.”

 

It’s not in his best interest, but he can’t help the annoyance that manages to overpower his fear. “Uh, sure. Except no, I don’t. I don’t even know how you got a key.”

 

“It’s not flattering when you play dumb, darling. Or _are_ you playing? I can never tell anymore.”

 

Embarrassment blisters along Lance’s chest and neck, but it brings wakefulness with it— if not a sense of preservation. “What are you doing here?” he demands. “Or did you forget that I dumped you three months ago? Because I gotta say, this is a whole new level of weird, even for you.”

 

“Listen, you little wretch,” Lotor glares, grabbing Lance by the front of his shirt. “I’m sick of your games, and I’m sick of you ignoring me. You think you can just move on? No.” Lance scoffs, prying desperately at Lotor’s clutch. “You are mine, or you are nothing.”

 

In the distance, he hears the fire alarm and sirens raising a cacophony together. His brows knit together in horror. “Lotor... what did you do?”

 

“I didn’t inherit much from my father, you know that— aside from my fortune, and my ability to never do things by halves.”

 

“I dunno about that. I don’t remember sex with you being that great, dude.” Lotor slams him back against the headboard. “Okay,” Lance winces, “I should have seen that coming.”

 

Shouting rumbles through the walls as emergency responders and tenants pass and evacuate. “What did you _do_ , Lotor? Try to burn the place down?”

 

Letting go of Lance, he adjusts the cuffs of his expensive shirt and smiles. “Turns out, Father owned this little complex, the same way I own _you_. To be frank, your repeated escapades with the fire department inspired me. I can collect insurance damages, and put an end to your rebellious disrespect all in one go.” Smoothing a hand through his sleek, bleach-white hair, he starts towards the door. “You see, Lance, you have one of two choices: you leave here with me, or you don’t leave at all.”

 

Lance scrambles out of the tangled sheets to his feet and scoops up Blue, whose unperturbed purrs instantly soothe him. “Lotor— wait—”

 

He trips over his own feet trying to catch Lotor’s wrist. His struggles stop Lotor, who looks unbelievably smug that Lance has decided to come with him.

 

Lance is moments from caving when the front door splinters, an axe embedded in the chipped shards. “Lance!” a familiar voice rings out.

 

Lotor shoves Lance behind him as Keith breaks down the door and kicks the splintered wood out of the way. Lance’s jaw drops, because Keith isn’t even in his gear: he’s in tight black pants and a matching t-shirt, a dark red flannel rolled up to his elbows.

 

“Wow, you look like an avenging lumberjack,” Lance says as Keith shoulders the axe, chest heaving.

 

“What?” he asks, staring from Lotor to Lance and back.

 

“Don’t worry,” Lance assures him. “It’s very sexy.”

 

“ _This_ is who you left me for?” Lotor frowns in distaste, sizing Keith up with a disbelieving once-over.

 

“I wish,” Lance admits, stars in his eyes that only see Keith. “He’s not interested.”

 

“Not— seriously, Lance? Are you that fucking dense, or just totally blind.”

 

“He’s certainly not the most astute in the bunch,” Lotor agrees, grabbing Lance’s jaw with a sharp hand to angle his face towards Keith. “But he’s very pretty, isn’t he?” Lance winces and tries to rip his face away, but Lotor only holds tighter.

 

“Let him go,” Keith demands, low and commanding. A shiver ripples through Lance at the sound of it.

 

Turns out, Lance’s terror (and arousal) freaks Blue out so much that she leaps from his arms to bite Lotor’s hand and slide down his chest with her claws like he’s a set of mom’s curtains. Lotor trips backwards with a shriek. “This is _Armani_ , you vermin!” She drops to the ground and dashes away with a yowl as Lotor tries to stomp on her tail.

 

Lance’s chest puffs up with rage and he surges forward to defend his little girl when Keith shoves the axe into his hands and dives for Lotor with his own fists.

 

Keith slams into him with every pause for breath. “What kind— of psychotic monster— would step on— a _baby_?”

 

“It’s a cat!” Lotor cries, trying and failing to block most of the hits.

 

“Same thing!” Keith snarls with a particularly bloody hit to the nose.

 

Lance watches helplessly, holding the axe and tiptoeing towards the fray. “Keith? What do I do with this?!”

 

“Hold it,” he grunts, trying to pin Lotor’s hands to keep him from hitting back.

 

“Like this?” Lance asks, grabbing the handle like it’s a baseball bat.

 

“However you like!” Keith weathers a particularly bitchy slap to the face that actually makes him laugh. Lance wants to call him a weirdo as much as he wants to kiss him.

 

“I can chop his dick off— do you want me to chop his dick off?”

 

Keith glances up from where he has Lotor pinned. “What? No. Where the fuck would you get that idea?”

 

“I don’t know!” Lance defends. “It seems as good a use for an axe as any!”

 

“You know what? Lance, put the axe down. _Gently_.”

 

“Oh, thank fuck,” Lotor mutters.

 

Keith presses down harder on his throat with his forearm. “That wasn’t for your benefit.”

 

A clamor comes from the hall where Lance’s door is now more of a gaping entryway. “Keith!” Shiro’s stern voice filters through the madness. “You better not be dead before I can suspend you for insubordination!”

 

“I’m _fine_ ,” Keith shouts back, fingers clenching and unclenching in the collar of Lotor’s shirt, as if debating on giving him another shake before Shiro can see. “I’m not even on the clock!”

 

Shiro finally lumbers through the doorway, smoke rising faintly from his gear. If Lance didn’t know any better, he’d think it was from the fury in his expression alone. “That is exactly the problem, _civilian_.”

 

While Keith doesn’t seem particularly chastised, he does loosen his grip Lotor, letting his bleached head _thunk_ uncomfortably to the floor. Shiro continues, stern and totally in control; Lance understands how he got his position in the fire department.

 

“The fire has been contained up to where it spread on the third floor. Cover your mouths and head to the stairwell for an escort to the ground. I’ll handle this one and the cat.” He jerks a thumb to the floor where Lotor is fretting over the claw marks riddling the silk of his blouse. Then to Keith, specifically: “We’ll discuss your punishment after you’ve been cleared by the EMTs.”

 

Lance watches and swallows, hesitantly following Keith across the room and around Shiro. When the fire chief narrows his eyes at Keith as they pass, he panics, hand throwing out to grab at the other man’s wrist. Keith doesn’t look at him, but he does twist his hand, lacing his fingers with Lance’s instead.

 

Keith’s palm is hot and dry, all rough planes and sharp edges like cragged desert hills. Lance always thought he preferred the beach, but before now he’s never felt more at home.

 

✧✧✧

 

The EMT gives both Lance and Keith clean bills of health. They’ve got some bruises, and Keith got his knuckles bandaged from where Lotor’s impressively sharp jawline scraped them raw, but the fire was contained before the smoke could really rise. Apparently Lance is better at accidentally setting things on fire than Lotor is when he genuinely tries.

 

Keith and Lance have sat in silence for the most part as the red tape slowly unravels around them, and it’s as companionable as it is uneasy. Of course, Lance is the one to break it.

 

“Are those leggings, or just really tight jeans?”

 

“What?” Keith asks, baffled.

 

“You look ridiculous.”

 

“You said I looked sexy!”

 

Lance waffles as he stands, dusting off the fabric of his pants. “I guess. But at this point, can my judgment really be trusted?”

 

“It’s your own fault for dating a guy who bleaches his eyebrows,” Keith says, crossing his arms with a fond smile.

 

“Can’t argue with that.” Lance hums, rocking on his feet. “You don’t happen to bleach your eyebrows, do you?”

 

Keith reels, aghast. “Does it _look_ —”  

 

Shiro drops down next to him on the back edge of the ambulance and cuts him off, slinging an arm around his shoulder. He looks much friendlier now than he did an hour ago when he was disciplining Keith for breaking at least seven different laws. “Did you ask him out yet?” he asks, conspiratorial and _loud_ — as if Lance isn’t standing right in front of them.

 

Keith scowls and shoves Shiro away. “I was going to before you _interrupted_ me.”

 

Grinning, Shiro gleefully tells Lance, “He hasn’t taken a full day off in weeks, just in case a call came in from your apartment. And he stalked your Facebook.”

 

“Shiro,” Keith hisses, looking like he’s seconds away from strangling his superior officer. “That’s not true.”

 

“It’s one hundred percent true,” another firefighter says as she walks by, carrying extra gear. “He made me give up my Saturday shift so he could work it instead when Chief stopped scheduling him. Then I had to go in anyway when he got sent home because he wouldn’t stop refreshing your story on Shiro’s phone.”

 

Lance’s brain implodes as he thinks back to all the views and notifications from Shiro over the past couple of months, compared to the zero from Keith.

 

“I swear it had nothing to do with you,” Keith tells him desperately.

 

“Dude,” Lance says. “I literally could have been snapchatting you this whole time.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “You know, _privately_.”

 

“And I suddenly have very important duties to attend to,” Shiro announces, disappearing as quickly as he came. Meanwhile, poor Keith looks torn between strangling his coworkers and impersonating the firetruck across the lot.

 

Without an audience, Lance’s confidence evaporates. “I don’t have to give you my snapchat, you know, if you prefer Facebook! Facebook is really good for friends, which we are, so—”

 

“We’re not friends,” Keith says. “I don’t want to be your friend.”

 

Recovering quickly despite how hot his cheeks are, Lance snaps back, “You’re the one who added me, if you don’t recall!”

 

“Technically, Shiro added you for me,” Keith corrects, because he doesn’t even realize when he’s being pedantic. “But friendship isn’t what I wanted from you then. And it’s definitely not what I want from you now.”

 

“What _do_ you want, Keith?” Lance asks, voice cracking slightly because he hasn’t been humiliated enough already.

 

Keith is quiet, but as usual, his expression says everything Lance needs to hear. He stands, but when Lance attempts to step back and give him some space, Keith catches him around the waist and keeps him there, pressed up against the firm expanse of his torso. Oblivious to how Lance is already melting in his hands, Keith cups his cheek and strikes a match with his thumb that lights Lance up in places he didn’t even know he could burn.

 

“I want you,” Keith murmurs. It’s the softest Keith has ever been, and it’s like a secret in the space between them. “You, and anything you’re willing to give me.”

 

Lance lets out a sigh of content, of wonder, of relief. “Between you and me, that’s a whole heck of a lot. I’m kind of easy.”

 

“No, you’re not.”

 

“Yeah, I am. But only for you.”

 

Keith’s breath feathers over Lance’s mouth, and Lance leans in, ready to close the distance when someone politely clears their throat.

 

“Ugh.” Keith’s forehead drops to Lance’s, and he has to bite back a smile as Keith’s brow pinches in frustration. “What now, Shiro?”

 

“Shiro’s a tad wrapped up right now, actually!” a mustachioed ginger-haired man informs them with entirely too much cheer. “And as chuffed as we all are for the two of you, we really need to get this life-saving stallion back to pasture so he can rest up for the next tumultuous rescue.”

 

When neither Lance nor Keith move, his moustache twitches. Lance is pretty sure he’s laughing at them. “Ahem. Doing so requires the two of you to relocate your heartwarming declarations about ten meters to the left, if you will-- not to mention, Mr. Kogane, Sergeant Kolivan has requested your presence at the precinct.”

 

“I’m not moving until I get to kiss you,” Keith says definitively, never looking away from where he’s holding Lance captive with his indigo gaze. “I’ve waited long enough.”

 

“Then hop to it, lad! We’ve waited as long as we could, too.”

 

Lance holds his breath. The seconds tick by yet Keith still doesn’t move. “I know it’s easy to get lost in my eyes, but you shouldn’t need to ask Siri to navigate your way out just to kiss m—”

 

His lips are chapped, but soft with how they caress the corner of Lance’s mouth and devour every last thought. He kisses like he can’t stop, and doesn’t want to. Lance is the one to pull away, because they have an audience and, unlike Keith, he has a sense of shame.

 

“When will I see you again?” he asks against Keith’s mouth, holding back for both their sakes, and everyone else’s. (If Keith had it his way, Lance is pretty sure neither of them would be wearing pants right now.)

 

“I can come around more often,” Keith offers breathlessly. “It doesn’t have to be when I’m working.”

 

“I sure hope so,” Lance says. “I feel a lot safer knowing you’re around to have my back.”

 

“Tomorrow,” Keith decides. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

From across the parking lot, Sergeant Kolivan yells. “Kogane! You have one minute!”

 

“Tomorrow,” Lance confirms, and Keith yanks him into one last hard, soul-shaking kiss.

 

✧✧✧

 

Once the first responders clear out with Keith in tow, Lance returns to his bed. Blue curls up on the blanket next to him and he sleeps easy knowing he has something to look forward to.

 

**Author's Note:**

> © [bluetworedone](http://www.twitter.com/bluetworedone) on twitter. 
> 
> twitter has wips and klance only. commissions details tbd.
> 
> thanks for reading!


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